Playing House: A Novel

When Playing House appeared in 1973, Publishers Weekly hailed it, A probing descent into madness that will fascinate the same audience that appreciated I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. This nationally bestselling story of one woman s struggle with the lasting effects of a childhood sexual relationship with her brother shocked American readers; it remains a literary work of enduring quality and value. In his foreword Philip Roth writes, The traumatized child; the institutionalized wife; the haunting desire; the ghastly business of getting through the day what is striking about Wagman s treatment of these contemporary motifs is the voice of longing in which the heroine shamelessly confesses to the incestuous need that is at once her undoing and her only hope.